1. Technical Field
This invention relates to optical devices and, more particularly, to techniques for sensing and controlling the figure of large segmented mirrors.
2. Discussion
There are many applications in which it is desired to measure the effective curvature or figure of an optical element or system. This is especially true for optical systems employing large segmented mirrors where it is desirable to adaptively control the shape of the individual segments and thus, the overall curvature of the optical surface presented by the mirror. Such mirrors may be employed in surveillance systems or directed-energy weapon systems.
There are various techniques known in the art to monitor and control the figure of these segmented optical elements. Briefly, some of the prior art techniques utilize active electro-mechanical measurement and control of the "back surface" of the segmented components, while others employ aperture sharing elements such as buried gratings, corner cubes, or holographic optical elements placed on the optical surface to be controlled. These techniques generally require complex fabrication processes on large optical elements and only provide an indirect measure of mirror/segment errors. Scene based image quality panel/figure estimators are sometimes employed but the performance of this approach is impacted by scene spatial frequency characteristics and may experience scene induced sensor dropout. Center of curvature sensors are known but they, like some of the other techniques, have highly accurate alignment constraints.
The present invention is directed to solving one or more of these problems.